Joby Aviation

[methods]

I had an opportunity to interview at Joby Aviation.




It had been almost 2 years since I visited their beautiful location in Bonny Dune. At the time it was a growing team with some amazing prototypes. I have to say that I was completely blown away by the rate at which they have grown since. I give them a 10X "high five" for growth, innovation, and fearless work toward the obvious future of Electric Transport.

The staff I spoke with were sharp. The prototypes were real birds that had seen air time. The environment was... wow... magnetic.

Now I may be a bit biased in that I grew up in the Santa Cruz Mountains... the trees, the mist, the short drive to the beach... but what a place to work! The on site cook prepared a lunch that was killer, the staff meeting was on point, the leadership was strong but approachable, the staff looked like they were working hard but not into fatigue, and they really seemed to offer something that I have not seen in any other workplace.



When I came in I was somewhat apprehensive about meeting with their lead electrical. Sometimes these interactions get prickly.... for a lot of reasons. This was not the case at all. Their EE was confident, patient, and welcoming. I would work there in a second and I suggest that if you are exceptional... you apply.

The tek was about as cutting edge as you can get. They were utilizing COTS hardware where available... but they are definitely breaking ground and their batteries, controllers, and motors indicated that they mean business. I had a chance to dig into safety and reliability - and from the conversations we had... I think they have a solid grasp on what it is going to take to pass the bar. When we tossed around failure modes their EE immediately addressed 2nd order worst case failures, acknowledged (instead of avoided), and had solutions on hand and in progress. I was impressed.

If you feel strongly about electric flight and you are ready to work hard to make it happen then I don't think there is anywhere else on the planet where you could have more of an impact.

-methods

 

[ambroseliao]

I certainly hope you get the job!

Be sure to let us know either way...

 

[Dauntless]

Dang, I first looked at that pic thinking it was an unusual prop.

When I came in I was somewhat apprehensive about meeting with their lead electrical. Sometimes these interactions get prickly....

-methods

When you go to meet people in Hollywood you can almost expect the prickly --- Usually for the inverse of the reasons you're thinking of. I remember an early internet broadcasting organization that had raised an extraordinary amount of venture capital (Rivaling the Dreamworks SKG startup) offering me interviews with several different units. I was obviously not one of the veterans of this, but kind of like being on expert on ES you just do a few things on your own that people notice. What an opportunity for a real gig at this place.

What stood out was that they didn't want to actually talk about the job. Imagine an interview where you don't talk about the job. Doing this over and over again. Always they start off with this nondisclosure agreement. With 20/20 hindsight I can say with certainty it was a coverup, because noone knew what they were doing. Some of the grim looks I got when I ventured so far beyond the knowledge of the guy in charge. Who was too insecure to just go ahead and hire someone who knew what he was doing. Confirmed by what happened with what little I experienced in what they allowed me to see and discuss with the employees "Working" --- Or trying to appear to work --- Who'd get panicked looks and scuttle off like cockroaches. Shortly after one of the head people had press conference where they talked about their 'Remarkable' advancement --- Figuring out to do something I'd been mentioning in interviews that was common knowledge among those of us tooling with basic video online. This was a 9 figure startup.

Imagine what it would have been like to work there in the few months between those interviews and the bankruptcy filing. (And the arrests of those in charge.) The short version of what people I knew told me was I'm probably happier for not being there. The odd thing in my field is the way so many people who don't know what they're doing get to be in charge because they can gladhand, then surround themselves with others who safely know even less and don't gladhand as well. How nice it must be in a place where they're trying to protect proprietary information and the work environment, rather than protecting things that aren't worth protecting.

So I'd say you should interview as slowly as you can, eh. . . ?

 

[methods]

Joby has a pretty good interview schedule. I am fresh from watching our team at EM do a lot of interviews - psyche and tech - so from that perspective:

* They spent a long time and made me feel welcome
* They allowed me some freedom to walk around, look at things, meet the team - clearly nothing to hide or any of the NDA hyper-focused super-stealth TV emulation stuff.
* They put their head electrical on me and kept me at a whiteboard until we had to break off
* They drove a hard line on compensation
* They fed me well and answered every question I had frankly
* I had face time with two out of three of the leads
* Their software team had a really good attitude and did not get defensive at all when I asked very probing questions
* The overall vibration of the place was good. You really have to go there to feel it. No idea how it feels after a year.

Good company.
Balls out building the future.

Kind of like the characters of this board... making it happen by making it happen.

-methods

 

[Arlo1]

Thanks for sharing Methy.

 

[LockH]

Dang Methods. Just stumbled across this... "Joby" sounded familiar... dang if I didn't bring `em up on ES back in May, 2011:
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=27571

Anyway... DO hope ya hear back from them in the affirmative! Maybe tell Mr. Bevirt we're rootin' for Joby. Hehe

Lock

 

[methods]

They had some impressive gear laying around... seeing how they actuate all the power systems was impressive. High end stuff for sure.

We had a compensation miss-match, so looking elsewhere.

-methods

 

[LockH]

Ya know? I said in that thread: "...so they're invited aboard ES? Any interest in selling motors and controllers to the ES world?"

... and waddayouknow. ES Username "joeben" DID pop up in that thread? (Then ES reports "Last visited: Sat Jul 07, 2012")

To say "Thank you so much to everyone for your encouragement and support!" etc

So ya might remind "joeben" that you have the ES Nation at your back? Can offer support and ideas... maybe? That ebike conversion kits might be a good market for Joby to tap?

They obviously don't realize watt they missed in not signing you aboard their team. [grumble grumble]

 

[methods]

I think they are targeting a different market.


-methods

 

[LockH]

I think they are targeting a different market.
-methods

Understand. But which d'you think might be larger? And aren't the tech's overlapping? I expect their motors are spendier to buy but I tend to look at stuff in overall "cost per mile" over the useful life before replacement. Like, wouldn't you pay more for a battery you could will to your kids after yer gone?

 

[Arlo1]

I think they are targeting a different market.
-methods

Understand. But which d'you think might be larger? And aren't the tech's overlapping? I expect their motors are spendier to buy but I tend to look at stuff in overall "cost per mile" over the useful life before replacement. Like, wouldn't you pay more for a battery you could will to your kids after yer gone?

your talking about VERY expensive motors that are hard to implement in E-bikes and most of them are hard to run with cheep controllers.

 

[LockH]

^^ Gotcha... But afaik, "expensive" tends to relate to volumes of production. In other words if they were making millions of their motors every year I'll guess cost of materials alone rather "cheap"? Good point re controllers. Donnaknow offhand whether they're building their own "special" controllers where other "off the shelf" controllers would perform just fine?

 

[craneplaneguy]

Interesting, to say the least, designs.

I happen to know Joe Clark, his company is the big name in winglets for Boeing aircraft and others. He has a ranch and the longest private airstrip in the US in Idaho, a couple hours flying time from my place. I have one of the shortest at 400', for 35 years now, and oddly enough that makes us simpatico! I drop into his place from time to time, the next time I do it would be fun to run the wing tip design on Joby's bird past him! It would at the very least give him something to think about

I wonder if any of the Joby people are active pilots, what their background in actual small aircraft flying is, as opposed to designing technological wunderkinds like these. By that I mean, any active "real" pilot I know, myself included, would look at those designs and blow their coffee out their nose's. A whole lot of moving parts is sure impressive from a design POV, but not what I want to pre-flight every time I fly, maybe the government or the military could deal with the complexity involved here, but don't expect to be taking off from your driveway in one these things anytime soon, or ever.

The noise level is another thing, the multiplicity of numerous 4 bladed propellers could quite likely set up harmonics that would be akin to a helicopter's interaction of the main rotor with the smaller and much faster spinning tail rotor. I don't care what kind of silent power plant it has, it would still be a big unknown from the noise standpoint. A medical rescue chopper flew over my place just yesterday, man those things are noisy and it wasn't the turbine engine but the rotor interaction that i heard first and last, the engine noise was minor in comparison.

More power to Joby, super cool tech to look at, impressive as hell design, I'm just throwing a little cold water reality check on it. There is a damn good reason
why aircraft have evolved like they have: KISS.

 

[toolbag]

Check out one of Joby's other projects for an interesting read on propeller-propeller interactions having to do with acoustics: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/12/science/rethinking-the-airplane-for-climates-sake.html?_r=0. The NASA guys are pretty convinced that more propellers allows for a multitude of interesting (noise reducing) aircraft characteristics.

 

[methods]

Interesting, to say the least, designs.

I happen to know Joe Clark, his company is the big name in winglets for Boeing aircraft and others. He has a ranch and the longest private airstrip in the US in Idaho, a couple hours flying time from my place. I have one of the shortest at 400', for 35 years now, and oddly enough that makes us simpatico! I drop into his place from time to time, the next time I do it would be fun to run the wing tip design on Joby's bird past him! It would at the very least give him something to think about

I remember when those winglets first appeared... last time I flew SWA it seems they now turn both up and down!

I wonder if any of the Joby people are active pilots, what their background in actual small aircraft flying is, as opposed to designing technological wunderkinds like these. By that I mean, any active "real" pilot I know, myself included, would look at those designs and blow their coffee out their nose's. A whole lot of moving parts is sure impressive from a design POV, but not what I want to pre-flight every time I fly, maybe the government or the military could deal with the complexity involved here, but don't expect to be taking off from your driveway in one these things anytime soon, or ever.

They absolutely have active pilots and aeronautical engineers on board. I thought the exact same thing while viewing a different scale model they had on display... all those moving parts and all that reliability. When we talked about it - it boiled down to what I expected:

Traditionally: KISS and make sure it never, ever, ever fails, and have a mechanical backup.

New thinking: 3X redundant systems, if one fails, work around it and keep going.

That sort of thinking resonates with me. Some folks like to have one very good highly reliable car. They pay top dollar to maintain and repair it. They baby it and trust it.
Me... on the other hand... I always have 3 beater cars. All of them run, I put no money what so ever into any of them, when one breaks I rotate to another until I have time to fix it.

I think a lot of the existing thinking goes back to old school military engineering. Do it once, do it right, over do it, add 10X margin, damn what it costs, keep it in service.

Tech is different now... we have a great abundance of incredibly powerful yet unreliable equipment. This allows us to do things which were previously impossible... but... if we try to use the old rule book to govern the new tek its going to stall out. We have to find new ways to build in reliability.

Like with a cell phone. Who would have thought that in only 10 short years you would have a super computer in your pocket that never fails, has a high definition screen, has amazing battery life, has 3 or 6 killer RF systems, has GPS and a compass and high definition video and a finger print scanner and great camera and a multi touch screen and is tied into a network and a market place... that runs apps that anyone can develop and can withstand incredible shock, vibration, temperature, and moisture... all for a hundred bucks. I mean... the modern smart phone (I have a nexus 5) is a bizarre artifact from the future as far as I am concerned so I treat it as an indicator of what we will soon be able to achieve in all areas of tek.

The noise level is another thing, the multiplicity of numerous 4 bladed propellers could quite likely set up harmonics that would be akin to a helicopter's interaction of the main rotor with the smaller and much faster spinning tail rotor. I don't care what kind of silent power plant it has, it would still be a big unknown from the noise standpoint. A medical rescue chopper flew over my place just yesterday, man those things are noisy and it wasn't the turbine engine but the rotor interaction that i heard first and last, the engine noise was minor in comparison.

More power to Joby, super cool tech to look at, impressive as hell design, I'm just throwing a little cold water reality check on it. There is a damn good reason
why aircraft have evolved like they have: KISS.

Yea... cant tell you how many birds I have flown that were noisy as hell. I really like big props that turn slow.

-methods

 

[craneplaneguy]

I feel the same about the state of tech these days, when I get in the plane and put the Sirius sat receiver in its dock, boot up the panel mount GPS, and put my smart phone in its ditty bag and have both plugged into my headset, all casual like! I remember the first time I texted someone while airborne, and then realized I could take a pic AND send it to them instantly, really, its almost unbelievable how fast this has all happened. My latest use of my phone was using the inclometer app to measure a grade even a low geared BBHD fat bike couldn't climb, I lost torque before traction, but it took a 55% grade to make it give up!